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REMARKS ON THE CHARACTER 



EDWARD EVERETT. 



BY GEORGE TICKNOR. 



REMARKS ON THE CHARACTER 



OF THE I^ATE 



EDWARD EVERETT. 



MADE AT A MEETlSr; OF TIIK 



^assarhuscttsi yustoriral .^oflcfy, 



JANUARY 30, isns, 



BY GEOEGE TICKNOR. 




(F/lOif TUB MEMORIAL OF E U ^' A R T> KVKIlETT.) 



BOSTON: 
.1. K. KAHWELI, AND COMPANY, 1' 1{ I N T K, K S , 

3 7 CON(;UK. SS .STREET, 

1805. 



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D ijT sadly, so suddenly lost. 

r) Vp becoming the occasion, so 

J UJ in his early youth, he rose 

tu ci jieigiit, wnicu lias ica us to watch and honor and 
understand, from the iirst, his long and brilliant career. 

On looking back over the two centuries and a half of 
this our New England history, I recollect not more than 
three or four persons who, during as many years of a life 
protracted as his was beyond threescore and ten, have so 
much occupied the attention of the country, — I do not 
remember a single one, who has presented himself under 
such various, distinct, and remarkable aspects to classes 
of our community so separate, thus commanding a de- 
gree of interest from each, whether scholars, theolo- 
gians, or statesmen, which in the aggregate of its popular 
influence has become so extraordinary. For he has been, 
to a marvellous degree successful, in whatever he has 
touched. His whole way of life for above fifty years 
can now be traced back by the monuments which he 



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IIEMAIIKS 



CHARACTER OF EDWARD EVERETT. 



Mr. President : I ask your permission to say a few 
words concerning the eminent associate and cherished 
friend whom we have lost, — so sadly, so suddenly lost. 
It is but little that I can say becoming the occasion, so 
well was he known of all ; for, in his early youth, he rose 
to a height, which has led us to watch and honor and 
understand, from the first, his long and brilliant career. 

On looking back over the two centuries and a half of 
this our New England history, I recollect not more than 
three or four persons who, during as many years of a life 
protracted as his was beyond threescore and ten, have so 
much occupied the attention of the country, — I do not 
remember a single one, who has presented himself under 
such various, distinct, and remarkable aspects to classes 
of our community so separate, thus commanding a de- 
gree of interest from each, whether scholars, theolo- 
gians, or statesmen, which in the aggregate of its popular 
influence has become so extraordinary. For he has been, 
to a marvellous degree successful, in Avhatever he has 
touched. His whole way of life for ;ibove fifty years 
can now be traced back bv the monuments which he 



erected with his own hand as he advanced ; each seem- 
inty, at the time, to be sufficient for the reputation of one 
man. Few here are old enough to remember when the 
first of these graceful monuments rose before us ; none 
of us I apprehend is so young, that he will survive the 
splendor of their long line. And, now that we have 
come to its end, and that it seems as if the Avhole air 
were filled with our sorrowful and proud recollections, as 
it is with the liglit at noonday, we feel with renewed 
force that we have known him as we have known very 
few men of our time. And this is true. How, then, 
can I say anything that shall be worthy of memory ; 
still less- anything that is fit for record^ 

When he was ten or eleven years of age and I was 
about three years older, his family came to live within a 
few doors of my father's house and subsequently removed 
to a contiguous estate. But, at this time, Mr. President, 
when the City of Boston, I suppose, was not one fifth as 
large as it is now, neighborhood implied kindly acquaint- 
ance. I soon knew his elder brother, Alexander, then 
the leader of his class at Cambridge, while I was a 
student in a class one year later, at Dartmouth College. 
I at once conceived a strong admiration for that remark- 
able scholar; — an admiration, let me add, which has never 
been diminished since. The younger brother, of whom 
I saw little, was then in that humble school in Short 
Street which he has made classical by his occasional 
allusions to it, and to the two Websters who were his 
teachers there. From the elder of these, Avho was fre- 
quently at ray father's house, I used to hear much about 



the extraordinary talents and progress of this younger 
Everett ; praise which my admiration of his brotlicr pre- 
vented me, I fear, from receiving, for a time, with so 
glad a welcome as I ought to have done. During tlie 
two or three subsequent years, while the younger brother 
was at Exeter or beginning his career at Cambridge, I 
knew little of him, though I was much with the elder 
and belonged to at least one pleasant club of which he 
was a member. 

The first occasion on which the younger scholar's de- 
lightful character broke upon me, with its true attributes, 
is still fresh in my recollection. It was in the summer of 
1809. Mr. Alexander Everett was then about to embark 
for St. Petersburg, as the private secretary of Mr. John 
Quincy Adams, and a few nights before he left us, he 
gave a supper — saddened, indeed, by the parting that was 
so soon to follow, but still a most agreeable supper — to 
eight or ten of his personal friends, one of whom (Dr. 
Bigelow) I now see before me ; — the last, except myself, 
remaining of that well remembered symposium. The 
younger brother was there, so full of gayety — unassum- 
ing but irrepressible — so full of whatever is attractive in 
manner or in conversation, that I was perfectly carried 
captive by his light and graceful humor. And this, let 
me here say, has always been a true element of his char- 
acter. He was never at any period of his life a saturnine 
man. In his youth he overflowed with animal spirits ; 
and, although from the time of his entrance into political 
life, with the grave cares and duties that were imposed 
upon him, the lighthearteduess of his nature was some- 



what oppressed or obscured, it was always there. There 
was never a time I think — excepting in those days of 
trial and sorrow that come to all — in which, among the 
private friends with whom he was most intimate, he was 
not cheerful, nay charmingly amusing. It was so the 
very day before his death. He was suffering from an 
oppression on the lungs ; and, as I sat with him, he 
could speak only in Avhispers ; but, even then, his natural 
playfulness was not wanting. 

But from the time of that delightful supper in 1809, 
my regard never failed to be fastened on him. At first, 
during his under-graduate's life, at Cambridge, I saw him 
seldom. But in that simpler stage of our society, Avhen 
the interests of men were so different from what they 
have become since, all who concerned themselves about 
letters, were familiar with what was done and doing in 
Cambridge. Everett, youthful as he was, was eminently 
the first scholar there, and we all knew it. We all — or, 
at least, all of us who were young — read the "Harvard 
Lyceum," which he edited, and which, I may almost say, 
he filled with his scholarship and humor. 

In 1811 he was graduated with the highest honors, 
and pronounced, with extraordinary grace of manner, a 
short oration, on — if I rightly remember — "The Diffi- 
culties attending a Life of Letters," which delighted a 
crowded audience, attracted more than was usual by the 
expectations that waited on what is called " The first 
part." But thus far, what was most known of his life 
was strictly academic, and was only more widely spread 
than an academic reputation is wont to be because he 



was himself already so full of recognized promise and 
power. His time, in fact, was not yet come. But the next 
year it came. He was invited to deliver the customary 
poem at Commencement, before the " Phi Beta Kappa 
Society." It was not, perhaps, a period, when much 
success could have been anticipated for anybody, on a 
merely literary occasion. The war with England had 
been declared only a few weeks earlier and men felt 
gloomy and disheartened at the prospect before them. 
Still more recently Buckminster had died, only twenty- 
eight years old, but loved and admired, as few men ever 
have been in this community; — mourned, too, as a loss 
to the beginnings of true scholarship among us, which 
many a scholar then thought might hardly be repaired. 
But, as in all cases of a general stir in the popular feel- 
ing, there was an excitement abroad which permitted the 
minds of men to be turned and wielded in directions 
widely different from that of the prevailing current. The 
difficulty was to satisfy the demands in such a disturbed 
condition of things. 

Mr. Everett was then just in that " opening manhood" 
which Homer, with his unerring truth, has called "the 
fairest term of life." And how handsome he was, Mr. 
President! We all know how remarkable was Milton's 
early beauty. An engraving of him — a fine one — by 
Vertue, from a portrait preserved in the Onslow family, 
and painted when the poet was about twenty, is well 
known. But, sir, so striking was the resemblance of tins 
engraving to our young friend, that I remember often 
seeing a copy of it inscribed with his name in capital let- 



V 



tors, and am unable to say that the inscription was amiss. 
Radiant, then, with such personal attractions, he rose 
before an audience already disposed to receive him with 
extraordinary kindness. 

His subject was, " American Poets," certainly not a 
very promising one. Of course his treatment of it was 
essentially didactic ; but there was such a mixture of 
good-natured satire in it, so much moi'e praise willingly 
accorded than was really deserved, such humorous aud 
happy allusions to what was local, personal, and familiar 
to all, and such solemn and tender passages about the 
condition of our society, and its anxieties and losses, — 
that it was received with an applause which, in some 
respects, I have never known equalled. Graver and 
grander success I have often known to be achieved, on 
greater occasions, not only by others but by himself. But 
never did I witness such clear, unmingled delight. Every- 
thing was forgotten but the speaker and what he chose 
we should remember. 

This success, it should be recollected, was gained when 
Mr. Everett was only a little more than eighteen years 
old. But, sir, in fact, it had been gained earlier. The 
poem had been read when he was only about seventeen, 
before a club of college friends in the latter part of his 
senior year, and had now been fitted by a few additions, 
for its final destination. Its publication was immediately 
demanded and urged. But on the whole it was deter- 
mined not to give it fully to the world. Four copies, 
however, were privately struck off on large paper, one of 
which I received at the time from the author, and thirty- 



six more in common octavo, which wore at once dis- 
tributed to other eager friends. But this was by no means 
enough. A Httle later, therefore, there were printed, 
with slight alterations, sixty copies more, of which he 
gave me two, in an extra form, marked with his fair 
autograph. I know not where three others are now to 
be found ; though I trust, from the great contemporary 
interest in the poem itself, and from its real value, that 
many copies of it have been saved. 

It is written in the versification consecrated by the 
success of Dryden and Pope ; and if it contains lines 
marked by the characteristics of the early age at which it 
was produced, there is yet a power in it, a richness of 
thought, and a graceful finish, of which probably few men 
at thirty would have been found capable. At any rate, in 
the hundred and more years during which verse had then 
been printed in these Colonies and States, not two hundred 
pages, I think, can now be found, which can be read 
with equal interest and pleasure. 

It was only a few weeks afterwards, as nearly as I 
recollect, that he began to preach. I heard his first two 
sermons, delivered to a small congregation in a neighbor- 
ing town, and I heard him often afterwards. The effect 
was always the same. There was not only the attractive 
manner, which we had already witnessed and admired, 
but there was, besides, a devout tenderness, which had 
hardly been foreseen. The main result, however, had 
been anticipated. He was, in a few months, settled over 
the church in Brattle Street, with the assent and admira- 
tion of all. 



10 



IWil, in tlif miilst of liis .siiccrss in the ])iil|ii(, lie was 
liinu'il iisiilc lo lifcomt- a coutrovcrsial tlu'olnf^ian. Marly 
III the aiiliimii (if ISllJ, Mr. (Joor^c U. lMi<;lisli publishod 
II Hiiiiill Iti.tilv, ciitillfil, " 'riic (Jrouiuls oC Cliristiauity 
I'Auiiuiiftl U\ ('oin|>ariii,'^ \\\t' Nt"\v 'I't'stauuMit with tlio 
0\d." it was, m laft, an uttark on the trnth of the Chris- 
tian nlij^ion, in tin- stMis(> of .Indaisni. Its author, whom 
I Iviu'w iMMsoiially, was a yonu}; man of very pleasant 
intcrconrsc, ami a j^roat 1ov(M- of hooks, of wliich ho had 
read manv. Imt with littli> ordor or woU-ilotinoil imrposo. 
I If \>iiida, I think, havt> hoiMi u man of letters, if sneh a 
liatl\ had I'cen open to l\iin. A profession, however, was 
neeillnl. lie studied law, Imt heiame dissatistieil with it. 
He studied .li\init\, hnt was never easy in his eonrse. 
llis n\ind was never widl halaneed, t>r well settled iiinm 
anything. lh> was always an adventnrer — jnst as mmh 
so in th(> si'holarlike periotl of his life, as he was atter- 
wards, when ho serveil imder lsn\ail Tasha, in Egypt, and 
atten\\>ted to revive the aneient war-ehariots ;irnu\l with 
se) thes. 

llis ill-eoustrueted hook reeeived several answers, direet 
ami indiroit, fr*Mn the pulpit and the press ; hut none of 
them was entirely satisfactory, hoeause their authors had 
not fretiueuttHl the strange by-paths of learning in which 
Mr. English had for some time been wandering with 
pex'verse pn^feivuce. Mr. K\erett, however. foUowtnl 
him everywhere with a earet"ul sehohu-ship and exact 
logic unknown to his presumptuous advej-sary. His 
" Oefence of Christianity" was published in 181-4, smd I 
still possess one, out i>f half a dozen copies of it that weiv 



11 



printed for the author's friends, on extra p.ijier, and arc 
become curious as showing how ill understood, in those 
simpler days, were the dainty luxuries of l)ibHography, 
But the proper end of the hook was quickly attained. 
Mr. English's imperfect and unsound learning was demol- 
ished at a blow ; and, as has just been so happily said by 
Dr. Lothrop, the whole controversy, even Mr. Everett's 
part of it, is forgotten, because it has been impossible 
to keep u[) any considerable interest in a question which 
he had so absolutely settled. Mr. Everett's " Defence," 
however, will always remain a remarkable book. Some 
years after its publication, Professor Monk, of Cambridge, 
the biographer of Bentlcy, and himself afterwards Bishop 
of Gloucester, told me that he did not think any Episcopal 
library in England could be accounted complete which 
did not possess a copy of it. 

In the winter following the publication of this book — 
that is, in the winter of 1814-15 — he was elected Pro- 
fessor of Greek Literature. I was then at the South, 
having made up my mind to pass some time at the Uni- 
versity of Gcittingen, and was endeavoring, chiefly among 
the Germans in the interior of Pennsylvania, to obtain 
information concerning the modes of teaching in Ger- 
many, about which tliero tlicn jircvaihd in New England 
an absolute ignorance now hardly to be conceived. "With 
equal surprise and delight, I received letters from my 
friend telling me of his appointment, and that, to qualify 
himself for the place offered him, he should endeavor to 
go witli me upon what we both regarded as a sort of 
adventure, to Germany. Perhaps I should add that this 



12 

sudden change in his course of life excited no small com- 
ment at the time, and that, especially by a part of the 
parish whose brilliant anticipations he thus disappointed, 
it was not accepted in a kindly spirit. But of its wisdom 
and rightfulness there was soon no doubt in the mind of 
anybody. 

We embarked in April, 1815, and passed a few weeks 
in London, during the exciting period of Bonaparte's last 
campaign, and just at the time of the battle of Waterloo. 
But we were in a hurry to be at work. We hastened, 
therefore, through Holland, stopping chiefly to buy books, 
and early in August were already in the chosen place of 
our destination. It was our purpose to remain there a 
year. But the facilities for study were such as we had 
never heard or dreamt of. My own residence was in 
consequence protracted to a year and nine months, and 
Mr. Everett's was protracted yet six months longer — 
both of us leaving the tempting school at last sorry and 
unsatisfied. 

How well he employed his time there the great results 
shown in his whole subsequent life have enabled the 
world to judge. I witnessed the process from day to day. 
We were constantly together. Except for the fu-st few 
months, when we could not make convenient arrange- 
ments for it, we lived in contiguous rooms in the same 
house — the house of Bouterwek, the literary historian, 
and a favorite teacher in the university. During the 
vacations — except one, when he went to the Hague, to 
see his brother Alexander, then our Secretary of Legation 
in Holland — we travelled together about Germany; and 



13 



every clay in term time we went more or less to the same 
private teachers, and the same lecturers. But he struck 
in his studies much more widely than I did. To say 
nothing of his constant, indefatigahle labor upon the 
Greek with Dissen, he occupied himself a good deal witli 
Arabic under Eicbhorn, he attended lectures upon modern 
history by Heeren, and upon the civil law by Hugo, and 
he followed besides the courses of other professors, whose 
teachings I did not frequent and whose names I no longer 
remember. 

His power of labor was prodigious ; unequalled in my 
experience. One instance of it — the more striking, per- 
haps, because disconnected from his regular studies — is, 
I think, worth especial notice. We had been in Gottin- 
gen, I believe, above a year, and he was desirous to scud 
home something of what he had learnt about the modes 
of teaching, not only there, but in our visits to the univer- 
sities of Leipzig, Halle, Jena, and Berlin, and to the great 
preparatory schools of Meissen, and Pforte. He had, as 
nearly as I can recollect, just begun this task. But how 
so voluminous a matter Avas to be sent home was an 
important question. Regular packets there were none, 
even between New York and Liverpool. We depended, 
therefore, very much on accident — altogether on tran- 
sient vessels. Opportunities from Hamburg were rare 
and greatly valued. Just at this time our kind mer- 
cantile correspondents at that port gave us sudden notice 
that a vessel for Boston would sail immediately. There 
was not a moment to be lost ; Mr. Everett threw every- 
thing else aside, and worked for thirty-five consecutive 



14 



hours on his letter, despatching it as the mail was closing. 
But, though sadly exhausted by his labor, he was really 
uninjured, and in a day or two was fully refreshed and 
restored. I need not say that a man who did this was in 
earnest in what he undertook. But let me add, Mr. 
President, that, by the constant, daily exercise of dispo- 
sitions and powers like these, he laid during those two or 
three years in Gottingen, the real foundations on which 
his great subsequent success, in so many widely different 
ways, safely rested. I feel as sure of this as I do of any 
fact of the sort within my knowledge. 

When I left Gottingen, he and a young American 
friend (Stephen H. Perkins) — then under his charge, and 
who still survives — accompanied me on my first day's 
journey. At Hesse Cassel we separated, thinking to 
meet again in the south of Europe, and visit together 
Greece and Asia Minor, which, from the time of the 
appearance of " Childe Harold," four or five years earlier, 
had been much in our young thoughts and imaginations. 
But " Forth rushed the Levant and the Ponent winds." 
A few months afterwards, at Paris, I received the appoint- 
ment of Professor of French and Spanish Literature, at 
Cambridge ; and, from that moment, it was as plain that 
my destination was Madrid, as it was that he was bound 
to go to Athens and Constantinople. We did not, there- 
fore, meet again until his return home, in the autumn of 
1819, where I had preceded him by a few months. 

From this time Mr. Everett's life has been almost con- 
stantly a public one, and all have been able to judge him 
freely and fully. He began his lectures on Greek litera- 



15 



tnrc at Cambridge the next summer, and I went from 
Boston regularly to hear them, for the pleasure and 
instruction they gave me. The notes I then took of them, 
and which I still preserve, will bear witness to the merit 
just ascribed to them by the fiiend on my left, who heard 
the same course somewhat later. 

But Mr. Everett was, in another sense, already a public 
man. From the natural concern he felt in the fate of a 
country he had so recently visited, he took a great interest, 
as early as 1821-23, in the Greek Revolution, and wrote 
and spoke on it, both as a philanthropic and as a political 
question. In 1824 he was elected to Congress. There 
and elsewhere, like other public men of eminence, he has 
had his political trials and his political opponents ; some- 
times generous, sometimes unworthy, but never touch- 
ing the unspotted purity of his character and purposes. 
All such discussions, however, find no becoming place 
within these doors. We recognize here no such divisions 
of opinion respecting our lamented associate. AVe remem- 
ber his great talents, and the gentleness that added to 
their power ; his extraordinary scholarship, and the rich 
fruits it bore ; his manifold public services, and the just 
honors that have followed them. All this we remember. 
In all of it we rejoice. We recollect, too, that for five-and- 
forty years, he has been our pride and ornament, as a 
member of this Society. But we recognize no external 
disturbing element in these our happy recollections. To 
us, he has always been the same. At any meeting that 
we have held since he became fully known to us and to 
the country, the beautiful, appropriate, and truthful reso- 



16 



lutions now on your table, might — if he had just been 
taken from us as he has been now — have been passed by 
us with as much earnestness and unanimity, as they will 
be amidst our sorrow to-night. They do but fitly com- 
plete our record of what has always been true. And let 
us feel thankful, as we adopt this record and make it our 
own, that — grand and gratifying as it is — neither the 
next generation nor any that may follow will desire to 
have a word of it obliterated or altered. 



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